Previously I’ve posted on Hackers using IRC to interact with Botnets and the relation between Baxandall’s three respects as explained by Barnard. Here I will lay out the basic argument of the work I have done for the pre-writing assignment.

I will be looking at the match between formal qualities and horizons of the hacker subculture showing why the hacker subculture uses IRC to interact with Botnets. I will show the HCI community that individual and subculture interpretation is important when it comes to design because designs are used in different ways by different groups of people shown using visual culture theories. As well formal qualities of the IRC protocol and IRC clients can be related to why the medium is used by the hacker subculture (especially in comparison to why they don’t use other chat/IM clients). Life worlds and horizons of different people and communities can be used to understand hackers interacting with IRC and Botnets specifically using Baxandall’s three respects, but also drawing on Hebdige and other theorists.

Finally, I would like to bring my own experiences into this since I have used IRC in the context of the hacker subculture (no, not controlling Botnets..). Is this relevant? Necessary? Would it be good to have? Worthless? Thoughts?